In modern computing infrastructures it is useful to be able to uniquely identify an object of service. In this application, the term “object of service” will be used to refer to any separately characterisable element within the infrastructure upon which a service, or set of services (such as support, maintenance or system management services, for instance) is remotely delivered. Examples of objects of service could be, for instance, computer systems, operating system instances, hardware devices, or applications. It is also useful to keep track of such objects of service over time and across changes to some or all of the underlying identifiers used to distinguish one object of service from other objects of service within the same data processing infrastructure.
This is particularly useful when data relating to, or associated with, one or more objects of service is stored in one or more remote data repositories over a long period of time.
In addition, if data from many objects of service are stored in more than one data repository, it is useful to be able to correctly identify an object of service uniquely across the multiple data repositories so that data from multiple objects of service are not mixed up.
If information from an object is stored or used remotely from the object of service it is often useful, or indeed essential, to be able to identify the source of the data. If an object must be tracked over a period of time then it is useful to be able to connect new data from that object to previous data from the same object.
Depending on the use of the data, it can also be useful to be able to associate data from an object as it exists today with the state of the same or equivalent object at some point in time in the past. If this is not catered for then existing objects could become orphaned as their identifiers change over time and ‘new’ objects will be created unnecessarily, leading to a proliferation of objects and the fragmentation of historical data relating to the objects of service.
This invention is directed to the provision of one or more of the facilities referred to above.